


Life Sucks, then you Die. Sort of.

by Saber_Sloth



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Drabble Sequence, Drug Running, F/M, Gangs, Mentions of Rape, Mentions of drugs, Original Character Death(s), Pragia (Planet), Tags Are Hard, Tell me if i need more tags, Teltin Facility, Underage(ish) Drinking, mentions of abortions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-16 03:58:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 6,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5813101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saber_Sloth/pseuds/Saber_Sloth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small and sometimes long moments in time for one, Ankaa Shepard. OC Insert. </p><p>Life sucks. Then you die. Then you wake up as a baby.</p><p>Little Ankaa hadn't always been little, or Ankaa, and she's definitely NOT Shepard! Even if that becomes her last name. Or, Ankaa Shepard spends her whole life running away from Plot, so when it smacks her in the face she really doesn't know how to handle it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story just sort of happened, it wormed it's way into my brain meats, and through me to my keyboard and I typed, and typed, and typed so I have a fair bit done-ish, and I thought why the heck shouldn't I post this? Even though I other projects on the go...but I did update 'Catch a Falling Star' before I posted this so...on with the show!

—

 

I remember dying.

It wasn't the realization that I died, or was dying then blinking and I was elsewhere. There was no helpful anthropomorphic humanoid avatar of death to give me instructions.

I remember the blood. The terror. I remember _oh god, oh god, not me!_ The _why? Why, oh god why?_ And the _how could you?_

I remember gasping, clinging to life, frantically trying to save it. The realization that I couldn't.

The unimaginable, undeniable agony. Screaming my voice raw.

Then I was nothing. No one. It was just dark. I was drifting in a sea of blackness.

Then I wasn't. It was bright - too bright, and I was screaming again.  
  


—


	2. Chapter 2

—

 

It hadn't taken me long to realize that I was a baby.

I never believed anything concrete about death and the afterlife. I didn't think that after my life, there would be another one. Memories included.

Perhaps it was a good thing that I was a baby instead of an adult when I got here. My death was traumatizing. I probably wouldn't have gotten over it — what? Was I supposed to go into therapy? And how was I supposed to make sure I didn't end up in the loony bin? — but I did, and it was all due to one single person.

The second screaming voice moments after I stopped, and realized that I was smaller then everything around me.

In that moment I realized that I have a brother. A twin brother.

It took time for me to compartmentalize away my death. Rationalize it. But I could, because I have new responsibilities.

Our mother was a raising us alone, in a quiet, nice, but poor part of the city in somewhere in the middle of Russia. She never told us what happened to our father. Or even if she knew who our father was.

But we lived a quiet life, some hundred odd years after I died.

I don't know why I was allowed to remember my past life, but maybe it was a clerical error in the great bureaucracy in the afterlife.

 

—


	3. Chapter 3

—

 

Mother always looked at us in a barely hidden concern.

I didn't understand why she looked at me with those eyes, maybe it was because of how mature I seemed, but my brother, Draco, had always been a sickly child. Shaking, weak. Maybe that's why she named him after the dragon stars.

It was his need of me that allowed me to push my baggage to the background.

I found out why the day after we finally bought a television, it was playing in the background mother called me down from my room to look after Draco.

I tripped down the stairs.

I stopped myself from falling.

My mother looked at me in horror as a blue glow surrounded me.

I didn't know what happened. I didn't want to stare at my mother's horrified eyes, so I turned my head to the television.

It was a news program.

Announcing the anniversary of the end of the First Contact War.

The First Contact War.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

After that I lost concentration on my biotic...? Was it biotics? _Oh My God! Biotic!_ field, I fell to the ground at the same time as my eyes rolled back as I feinted.

 

—


	4. Chapter 4

—

 

When I woke up, my brother and I were not at home, we were in what roughly translated into Shepherd's Flock for Lost Souls.

It was an orphanage.

Mother sent the both of us, her own children! To an orphanage.

I tried to console my brother as best as I could.

 

—

 

She had left us both on the doorstep with our names (just our first names) pinned to our jackets.

So the administrator—who told us her name was Marcy even though she was sure we were too young to remember— gave the both of us the surname of Shepard.

I nearly had a heart attack.

When you end up in the Mass Effect world — because now I knew for sure that is where I was, the omnitool the administrator used, over hearing people talk about the Citadel, the end of the First Contact War more then sold me on that idea — you wanted to help Shepard, not be her (or him)!

My heart calmed down when the administrator explained that all orphans in the district took on the name of Shepard if they turned up without one of their own.

That night I looked into the mirror, I couldn't be Jane Shepard! I didn't want the fate of everyone and everything on my shoulders!

I didn't even have red hair or green eyes.

I have black hair and blue eyes. And my name is Ankaa. Named after the star in the phoenix constellation, as my brother was the dragon; Draco.

And so what if my last name was Shepard now, there were thirty other orphans with the same name as mine just in this building.

One of them could be _The_ Shepard.

With that thought I left the bathroom and crawled into the small bed next to my brother as he cried himself to sleep.

We just turned four.

 

—


	5. Chapter 5

—

 

A civil war broke out a few months later. Something about not being satisfied with our position in the galaxy and that the other side wanted to take power and control of Earth and demand the recognition they believed humans deserved.

Every time I thought about it I couldn't help but snort.

Then I had to chastise myself. People, real people were dying. This wasn't just some new lore or a codex entry that was playing in front of me like a movie. Holo. Vid. Whatever.

This was real life. This was my life.

The amount of orphaned children increased seemingly overnight.

But it wasn't them I was worried about.

It was Draco.

There was nothing anyone could do to help him, besides-

Our bitch mother, she was the one to name us after myths and stars, but she didn't even...fuck. Maybe I wouldn't have been this cruel to her if it had just been me, but she gave up Draco too.

When she was pregnant with us she was exposed with Eezo. Element Zero.

The eezo bounded properly to my nervous system making me a biotic.

The eezo didn't bind properly to Draco's though. He got seizures and a death sentence.

 

—


	6. Chapter 6

—

 

I was picked up by a pair of strong arms.

I had been walking around in the middle of a war zone in a daze.

Maybe I was hoping to die again.

My brother asked me to kill him. Give him a mercy.

Tears gathered in my eyes, because I thought about it.

My tears fell because I couldn't.

He was my brother!

Instead I sat by his side in the hospital as he died, slowly in agony, and I watched. At six years old (and thirty two) I watched my brother die.

I didn't even realize when I closed my eyes and cried myself to sleep.

 

—

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

—

 

When I woke up I was in a sterile hospital room. One of the orderlies must have found me and brought me back.

"Ahh. I see you are awake. Good. We'll have you in your new room in a moment." the man, doctor paused, tapping on the interface in front of him.

My room? Had I been injured when I was outside? Everything was blurry and out of focus.

"Hmm. This is surprising." the doctor said tapping on the interface, after he waved a scanner over me. Was something wrong? "I had always believed that we had already found the child with the ultimate biotic potential, but...you girl...Hmm. Perhaps having two subjects with such a vast potential is better than one." Wait! What!? "We will designate this one under the Zero category as well." the doctor spoke to someone out of my line of sight. "Place her into Subjects Zero's room for now, we will have to make other arrangements for this one."

I blinked frantically as I heard someone murmur off to the side out of my line of sight, "They are both female. As are the asari. That might have something to do with their biotics." there were wordless sounds of agreement.

The black and gold of the insignia came into focus just as the doctor said, "Welcome to the Teltin Facility, Subject Zero One."

 

—


	8. Chapter 8

—

 

Hell thy name is Teltin.

I thought when my boyfriend murdered me was the height of horror.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

I met the small girl with her blond hair chopped short, that would grow up to become the badass named Jack.

She introduced herself as Jennifer.

Right now she was a small terrified girl that Cerberus was torturing. I tried to comfort her as best as I could.

I knew we wouldn't get the worst of it. The other children would. All so the experiments wouldn't kill us.

Cerberus did one thing right. Or wrong. Wrong for them. Definitely.

It took them nearly a year for my own room to be built into the facility. It took them so long to make sure none of the other kids used the construction as a way to escape. They cut a few corners however, and the walls between mine and Jenny's room weren't as soundproof as they would have liked to think.

Jenny and I, made sure to call each other by our names. To remember that we had names. That we were human. That we mattered to each other, as humans and not just as tools.

I learned to survive. I had too.

I didn't want to leave Jenny here alone.

So I killed.

I felt the euphoric high as they pumped their drugs into me. Carrot.

Watched as my control and power grew. If not, all I knew was pain. Stick.

Though with all my knowledge of what biotics could do, all the way up to the extra stuff from the third game, and the DLCs, I had a cheat sheet. One that I was sure I shared with Jenny.

The one thing I had over them, other then my biotic cheat-sheet, was that I had hope. The best and worst thing that I could do to myself and to Jenny.

Hope was the only thing we could cling to. Even when its too stupid for us too. Hope can be devastating, debilitating.

But I had faith too. Faith that the universe, the Powers That Be, wouldn't leave the girl that would become integral to the second game here, that the kids would riot, that one day these Cerberus fuckers would fuck something up and we'd get out.

That there was an out.

I told Jenny about Earth, and about Draco. I told her about space. And the stars after which twins were named. I told her that there was good out there, as well as bad.

Then one day, nearly seven years after I was brought here I heard kids yelling, and sirens blaring.

I engulf my door with my biotics pulling as hard as I could gasping as the door pulled free, and there was Jenny on the other side, giving me a wide grin, her eyes wild.

It was time.

The two of us ran, flinging our biotics all over the place, this would be our only chance.

 

—


	9. Chapter 9

—

 

We fell into the chairs, giddy, laughing with an edge of hysteria.

The VI helping us pilot the ship we stole. By being named subjects in the Teltin facility it gave us clearance to fly the ship.

Fucking Cerberus.

Our flying was shaky, but fuck we were only twelve(ish). After the ship's VI took over steering, leading us in a direction of civilization, we explored the ship.

It was tiny.

It was just the pilot and co-pilot's chairs. two small bunk beds crammed into a the cargo area, which was full of bulky containers.

All in all it kinda reminded me of something from Star Trek.

In one of the storage containers we found some cloths. Adult sized, but it would do. We cut off the pants, so they were pants for us, using one leg for a belt and the other for the shirts we had left the same length, with the other leg we belted out new shirts as well.

The one thing we did take off with prejudice was the Cerberus logo on the cloths.

There was even some food and water.

Must have just come back from a supply run or something.

On the downside, it had just gotten back from a supply run.

An alarm started sounding, and the VI was calmly informing us that we didn't have enough fuel and that we were going down.

Jenny looked at me, and I looked at Jenny. Shocked, scared, frozen.

Then the VI informed us of where space safe suits were, and where the oxygen tanks were kept.

In a mad dash, we scrambled to put them on, they were too big for us, but we could still move in them. Then we tripped, and crawled our way back to the chairs and bucketed ourselves in just at the VI said that the ship was entering atmosphere.

Who's atmosphere I didn't know.

 

—


	10. Chapter 10

—

 

When we came too, I saw the frozen expanse in front of us. We'd crashed on some frozen, desolate planet.

With a rough voice I told the VI to activate a distress beacon. Jenny unbuckled as I said that.

We were on solid ground, and the ship didn't seem all that damaged. Nothing was breached. Our air wasn't escaping.

We had some food and some water.

All we had to do was wait for help. I prayed that it wouldn't be Cerberus who came for us.

 

—

 

A few hours later we removed our enviro suites sure they would save us from the elements but they were huge, and being frozen to death seemed like a better option than starving or from dehydration,

Then days later there was a banging on the hul.

Jenny and I froze. Staring at eachother.

The VI helpfully informed us that it was three humans. If they were Cerberus might as well get this over with.

I told the VI to open the airlock and let them in.

They were Alliance soldiers. They were hoping that we could help them, they weren't expecting two kids, bruised and bloody, with years old scars in clothes too big for our small forms.

The sight of us probably broke their hearts. I was jaded enough to use that.

"Ship's workin'. Kinda it don't 'ave the fuel." I tell them.

"Well ain't that a coincidence. Our ship was damaged, but we have fuel. Brooks stay with them. Kowalski and I will go get the fuel. Stay in contact."

After the two men had left I asked for their names. Margaret Brooks, had medical training, and the person that was left with us. When she tried to look us over, Jenny bit her. Honestly I wasn't much better. I don't think I'm ever going to trust a medical professional again. John Kowalski and Josh Quinn, were marines.

She told us that they were the only ones of their whole crew that had survived. She told us that there was a thresher maw. At my alarmed squeak, she told me that it was dead. With the shadowed look in her eyes, I believed her.

Akuze was the name of the world we were on.

I gulped. This was the sole survivor background.

And I was the only one here named Shepard.

 

—

 


	11. Chapter 11

—

 

The two other soldiers got back in no time. Refueled our tiny ship and calmly got back in. Then Josh Quinn the one in charge, or at least he was the one giving the orders, helped outfit us with two of his dead teammate's omnitools, and translator chips.

Jenny and I have never had one before. Helped us set us an account each online. Like a extranet profile, as well as a banking account, then he put in ten thousand credits, each.

"It's not much, but you two look like you could need it." was his reply when I asked why.

 

—

 

It was stupidly easy for Jenny and I to convince the Alliance Marines to not drop us off in Council Space. All it really took was the VI asking if we, and by 'we' I mean it asked if "Subject Zero Zero, or Subject Zero One required anything further." when the Alliance soldiers realized that they couldn't get the VI to answer them, and knew that it had answered to us.

The looks of shock and horror on their faces spoke for them after that.

Instead we were taken to Omega. The easiest place to get lost, and the easiest way to pop up out of nowhere. Even if you're twelve(ish)

Jenny and I talked about what we'd ever do when we got free, over the years we were in our rooms speaking through the walls.

Neither of us wanted to be held captive, used again.

Jenny wanted to be free to choose. She wanted to explore. Touch the stars. Do whatever the fuck she wants.

It made me sad, my heart hurt. She was going to be going through so much pain to become the fierce bad ass Jack I remember from the games.

I just wanted to go back to Earth, I just wanted to return to my normal. When I can do something as a memorial for Draco. Try not to be Shepard.

"And now It's not like we'll never talk." I tell her with a smile, as I bring up my new omnitool to life and send off a quick message to her.

_'See!'_ It said.

Jenny barked out a laugh. "I get it Annie."

I give her a hug, and then I turn and run, blinking my eyes, trying not to cry, onto the shuttle that would take me to a human colony (please oh god don't be Mindoir), that had another shuttle, that had a connection to Earth.

When I get to the top of the ramp I turn back and wave at my best friend, giving her a wide watery smile.

 

—

 


	12. Chapter 12

—

 

The first thing I did when I got back to Earth was go to the library. I had a lot of catching up to do in current events, and general knowledge that I missed with my near seven years in captivity.

Jenny and I messaged back and forth daily. More than that if we could.

Even with the credits that Josh Quinn had given me, I knew that they wouldn't last. I couldn't buy a place, no one would rent to an almost thirteen year old, and I couldn't get a job for the same reasons.

And that was how I ended up sleeping on the streets.

It wasn't like I was afraid of someone hurting me. I could, and would biotic some guys face off it they tried anything.

 

—


	13. Chapter 13

—

 

It didn't take long for me to fall into a gang, first I was running little things, data chips, envelopes, then it was running Red Sand. I was a nearly forty year old women (mentally) and I was a drug runner. I didn't tell them about my biotics. I didn't want anyone to find out, and have Cerberus lead to my metaphysical doorstep.

Everyone calls me Shepard now.

I still don't know what to think about that.

I told Jenny that I was in a gang. She just snorted, and told me that she was going to be a pirate queen. And to call her "Captain Isabella." and that her ship was called "The Siren's Call." Because Dragon Age was a thing back in the twenty first century. Well obviously Mass Effect wasn't a thing. But Bioware did do a space opera. Quantum somethingorother, or something about slip stream. The asari weren't called asari but they were green space babes.

I snort. "Well then _Captain_ Isabella, I'm a Friend of Red Jenny!" I cut off the call to Jenny's or Isabella's laughter.

 

—


	14. Chapter 14

—

 

Life carried on. I was used and abused, I've had two abortions before I hit sixteen.

The first guy raped me in my sleep. I think he drugged me.

The second one, I knew he drugged me.

I confronted Little John, the leader of the Sparrows, the name of the gang I'd joined nearly a year ago. Demanding that he do something about it. I was the only girl. So to them I was a toy. When I was informed of my vaulted positions in the Sparrows. They laughed at my horrified, and rapidly angering face. Grinning at me like the little pervs they were.

While they were laughing at me, making lewd gestures. I ripped a guy's face off it didn't stop until all but three (of the newest kids who didn't even have hair on their faces) were dead.

That was when all the thugs in the district found out that I was a biotic.

I haven't talked to any of them since. I even moved across town to get away from the staring and the whispers.

My Jenny, my bestest best friend Jenny wanted to be called Rouge now. After the X-Men. She'd found an old vid. Remakes of remakes and reboots of the ones that I remember. She still messages me everyday. Her hair was bright red and reached her ass the last time we video chatted. But she said that she'd change that, to brown, with a white streak. She begged me to get in on it too, I gave her a black look and told her to call me Wanda Maximoff. I cut her call so she could do a extranet search.

She called me back. Not long after and started calling me the "Scarlet Bitch." It was close enough.

I told her about the guys who raped me. I told her about me killing them all. I told her about the abortions.

She stayed with me all night as we got shitfaced together, even though there was a universe separating us.

 

—


	15. Chapter 15

—

 

After my face ripping, paste making episode, none of the local gangs wanted me. Even across town. Word travels fast. Some even heard my conversation with Jenny. Rouge. And looked up the name too.

They all started calling me The Scarlet Witch. Even though biotics are blue.

They all thought I was psycho. Even if they all wanted a powerful biotic, they all thought I was completely batshit crazy.

I don't blame them. A lot of people still think that biotics are demon possessed, or something. And that is just the people who've heard or seen vids, for the kids who saw me turn the rest of the guys into a fine paste I probably looked like a demon.

But this leads me to how I met Anderson.

I was alone, trying to get enough money together to get my ass off this rock and to meet up with Jenny. Rouge. I was fucking done with Earth. No matter the forty odd, fifty years that it had been my home. Not counting (never counting) the seven years Cerberus had me.

I was people watching, trying to find a mark. I saw someone in dress blues walk out of a fancy restaurant. Probably had credits to spare.

I tried to pick his pocket. I failed. He grabbed my wrist.

I was in shock, I probably looked like a fool staring at him, gaping in the middle of the street like I was. I would recognize him anywhere. I just tried to pick the pocket of David Anderson, an Alliance soldier.

I just failed at my attempt to pick the pocket of an Alliance soldier!

I was going to jail. I was so going to jail. I think I started gasping. I didn't want to be in a cell again. Never again.

My fake ID says that I'm eighteen and not sixteen. The profile I made with the soldiers during our grand escape I made sure to add two years to my age. Not like it really made that much of a difference to me. Going through puberty twice, I think I'm entitled to say whatever the fuck I want too about my age.

He didn't bring me to the cops right away. He took me into a nearby building, and talked to me.

Told me to be honest with him. We talked for hours, and hours. When the sun was setting he transferred some credits to my account, and gave me his contact info.

I asked him why as he was leaving. He paused by the door, "I remember Draco. When we couldn't find you I thought you died alone in a ditch somewhere. I made a promise to Marcy to look out for you kid."

"How do you know it's me?" I asked him, my voice trembling. Shouting at myself in my mind. I hadn't thought of my brother in years. What a bitch.

He smiled briefly,"I'd remember those eyes anywhere." Then he left.

I stood there long after the sun set and long after the stars came out. My eye are blue, yes, but their different shades. One is a deep dark blue, something so blue it didn't seem real to me sometimes. It wasn't something that looked like it was naturally occuring, at least not for humans. I remember some asari in the games with this deep, clear blue colour. The other was a light, light blue grey, that looked like silver in the right light, something like the sky and storm clouds.

I could vaguely remember him from my childhood. The Alliance was there in my poor ass town somewhere in the middle of Russia fighting the rebels.

Had Anderson been that vaguely intimidating figure stationed in the Hospital?

And if he was, why didn't I recognize him?

 

—


	16. Chapter 16

—

 

The next morning, with the money David Anderson gave me, and my fake ID (that I haven't ever really used. I never wanted any of the gangs I'd been in to know I had one, especially not one that could get me through all normal scans.), I got the memorial tattoo for my brother that I've always wanted to get.

 

—


	17. Chapter 17

—

 

Jenny didn't want to be call Isabella, or Rouge. She wanted to be called Peaseblossom. And I'm pretty sure she's in a cult. It was very hippy and not very Jenny.

Six months after my tattoo healed, I was in a bar, trying and failing to dance, I'd been drinking something vaguely fruity but definitely something asari, or asari inspired, when a new recruit in his fatigues grabbed my ass.

I ended up breaking his arm in two places and I'm sure I broke his nose too.

His two buddies broke a few bones too.

My nose was bleeding, not too sure if it was broken. I was bruised, but nothing else was broken.

The two of us, along with his buddies were taken to an Alliance something or other. It was a room, me and him were glaring at each other, and in walks David Anderson.

I gave a start.

"Since you say you're eighteen," and with the way he says it, he knows that I'm not. And he knows that I know, that he knows. "I'm going to give you a choice." he paused probably for dramatic effect, "Go to jail, or you join the Alliance." Shit. I know the idiot that grabbed my ass will be disciplined appropriately. But me, a Shepard in the Alliance.

I don't want to be held captive ever again. I never want to be on that end of a cell again.

I pick the Alliance. The grin on Anderson's face makes it all worth it. And hell maybe I'll meet the real Shepard now. Because there has to be a real Shepard.

When I was being taken away, one of the two buddies slowed to walk next to me.

"Those were some powerful biotics. What kind of bioamp are you using?"

I look him in the eye, and smirk, "I don't have one." I tell him, he stops stupefied as dose grabby and buddy number two. I'm sure the grin I'm wearing as I walk into medical is nothing short of feral.

  
—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that I haven't updated this is a while, hopefully I'll be able to kick writer's block in the rear and get more updates out!


	18. Chapter 18

—

 

That night I ask Peaseblossom for a video chat. The screen flares and there she is, with a few new tattoos, Her hair is purple in an asymmetrical bob, only her left side of her head is shaved bald.

I tell her what happened. She looked at me for a few moments, then she snorts and laughs. "Fuck Shep. I get it." and she did. She knew that I didn't want to captive just as much as she did. "Now give those Alliance pussies hell for me!"

 

—

 

  
After the Alliance recruit gene therapy package. Including the LX5 bioamps. The next few months focused into a tunnel of biotic, weapons, and tactical training.

I was being pushed hard. I didn't know if I could do it, but David Fucking Anderson thought that I could do, and I didn't want to disappoint him. God dammit it was fortysomething mentally, and I didn't want to disappoint a man I thought to be fictional a few years ago.

But fuck, if this is basic training. What sort of hell do the N Classes go through, never mind the other military's in the galaxy.

Practice mission and combat drills slowly turned into the real thing. Some missions turned into more missions, I was promoted.

Was labeled a N1 after a blinding blur of to many of those missions. Turns out Anderson didn't bother to tell me that I wasn't just going through basic training. That he also put me into the program used to create the best the Alliance had to offer.

And for some goddamn reason I like being a soldier.

Peaseblossom turned back into Jenny. Who turned into Jack around the time I'd started doing actual missions. It was a step, a big one, besides, Subject Zero, Jack was the only other name they called her in Hell. They called me Zero One. Or Ace.

I always thought they wanted to try and stack the deck. Humanity's I mean. A jack, and an ace. Or hell, even jack of all trades, ace in the hole, maybe.

_Sigh_. I shouldn't be thinking about this anymore.

And Jack, Badass Jack (heh, that one works). She thinks it's because they're paying me to kill people, and it's all legal.

Maybe Jack's right. I still get that euphoric rush every time I fight. Every time I kill.

That's something I haven't told the Alliance.

 

—

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

—

 

In a blinding, rushing moment. I hit a high. It was the best feeling in the world. My endorphins rushing, singing in my veins. Every kill I got higher and higher. It was like I hit orgasm, and he knew just the way to keep it going.

When there was nothing and no one left to kill the adrenaline wore off, slowly. I was like waking up. A bit at a time. Then I was plunged into icy water.

Torfan happened.

I was sitting in a cell (I was in a cell. I was in a cell. _Iwasinacell!!_ ).

I tried to keep my mind off it. It wasn't anger, rage. Or any hatred I had towards the batarians. I kept killing because it made me feel good. Better than good. Try as I might, to forget what happened to me. What they did to me, why I loved fighting, killing. I tried to deny that part of me, and look where that got me.

Fucking Cerberus.

Shit. I shouldn't blame them. I should have known to look out for. Ready myself for what could happen. I already knew that I craved a good fight. That I still feel that chemical rush every fight. Every kill.

Fuck I even knew going in. Torfan. I knew that background. I played that background. All of them really. I just thought that knowing what I know, I could change it.

Spent so long running from being Shepard, and then when I think maybe that I can change something, this might be why I'm here, to make a difference. Even if I'm not The Commander Shepard, I can change something. So I try to change something on a whim, when I heard where my next mission was I thought I could do...something. No planning. I just tried to do something. To make Torfan more than what the Lore made it.

I went in with a hope and a prayer. Now I know that nothing will change if I don't try harder than that.

At least now I know that I have to watch out for my version of blood-rage.

Silver _ fucking _ lining.

In my cell. My small ass cell. I worked out, in part to keep in shape, but also to work off my nervous energy. Talked the the guards on duty. Only one of them replied. He gave me cigarettes. Lit them too. Sometimes I could convince him to get me a book. A real hard copy. The smell of old books still calms me down, make me smile. I needed that.

Anderson visited. He was the only one. He told me they were calling me the Butcher of Torfan.

I think I threw up. That might have helped me get out. I know that I'll be heading to psych eval for a long while after this.

A few days after Anderson told me my new nickname, he let me out. Telling me that I've been promoted to N7. That I was expecting.

As I stepped out of the cell he smirked and said "Commander." That I wasn't expecting.

I stared at him for a full minute.

He's nearly grinning as he tells me that yes I was promoted. Both to N7 and to Commander. He told me that I deserved it.

The guard that I had spent a month with saluted me, with a quick, "Commander Shepard."

Time stood still as I tried to process.

I'm Commander Shepard.

Shit.

 

—

 


	20. Chapter 20

—

 

The next time I chatted with Jack "So Butcher huh?" she told me, amusement colouring her eyes. More new tattoos, and a short spiky haircut. Cotton Candy pink.

I snort and roll my eyes.

Trust Jack to be proud of that.

But still as we talked, she did make me feel better.

She always makes me feels better.

On Jack's advice I got an N7 tattoo to celebrate.

I got it on my shoulder. The left one. It might be a bit geeky but I wanted to make sure I took something else from my past life with me. Joining the old with the new. A bridge. Something to remind me that I'm not just a killer.

It might be stupid and silly, but I got it on the same shoulder as Hatake Kakashi from Naruto had his ANBU tattoo.

Maybe Draco would have liked some of the Anime I used to watch.

 

—


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update for you folks!
> 
> (And for those of you who're waiting on the first chapter of the _In the Shadows of Valhalla_ rewrite, It's coming together nicely! It should (hopefully) be out in the next few days!)

—

 

The funniest thing is, I never played the first Mass Effect game.

Sure I've read fanfiction, and for my first play-through of ME2 (where I got into the trilogy) I had access to the interactive motion comic.

I read the wiki, but that was years ago.

So I'm not exactly going in blind, but...

...never mind the fact that I've probably forgotten most of the small details in the games. Side quests, conversations and the like. Partly because of how many years it's been, and partly because I'd spent so long trying not to become Commander Shepard. Denying that I could be.

But I've never actually played through it.

I was always going to buy it, play it. When I could afford it, Mass Effect 3 was just around the corner. So I bought that instead. I kept putting it off until I could afford it. Then life got in the way, lost my job. Was evicted.

Then it was a matter of getting my life back together.

I bought it. I was in my new apartment, with my new boyfriend. I was so excited.

Until my boyfriend knocked me out and brutally murdered me.

That sort of derailed that plan.

Or, you know. All of them.

I don't know if my second hand knowledge would be a hindrance, or a blessing in disguise.

 

—


	22. Chapter 22

—

 

I started leading more and more missions. Shit that used to stress me out is now my everyday.

Black Ops. Redacted. Disavowed.

Words that made up my life now. 

The Alliance still doesn't know about my biological, chemical rush. My own little slice of a Cerberus given Krogen Blood Rage. 

I haven't been able to call Jack in a year and a half. 

Life was just a grainy mess of blackness and blood.

Until the day Anderson invited me on board the Normandy.

Eden Prime, here I come.

 

—

 

 


End file.
